


Keeper of the Lost Cities Book #7: Legacy

by mallowmelting



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: Canon Continuation, Elves, Fantasy, Gen, High Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-01-31 05:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12675105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mallowmelting/pseuds/mallowmelting
Summary: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR NIGHTFALL! War has finally come to the Lost Cities. The Neverseen have grown stronger under their new leader—but the Black Swan have been winning battles too. Faced with deadly biological warfare, an impossible-to-open cache, and a set of triplets with dangerous abilities, Sophie has to put a stop to the bloodshed and destruction—before it's too late.





	1. Epigraph

_When you are twelve,_  
_you will stand at a crossroads_  
_and make a decision_  
_that you will spend the rest of your life_  
_alternately_  
_immensely grateful for_  
_and deeply regretting._

_You will stand,_  
_half-blind with the naïveté of youth,_  
_staring out at two paths_  
_obscured in the misty haze of uncertainty_  
_vanishing into the darkness of a future_  
_that no one, anywhere, ever,_  
_can advise you about._

_You will hesitate_  
_and deliberate_  
_and consider_  
_and agonize—_  
_and you will make a decision_  
_halfway mad with indecision and uncertainty_  
_never quite sure of your own damn reasoning._

_You will rejoice for it._  
_You will suffer for it._  
_You will be rewarded for it,_  
_and you will be punished for it._  
_You will celebrate it and grieve it,_  
_bless it and condemn it,_  
_gain from it and lose from it,_  
_praise it and ache for it._

_You will cry many a night_  
_apologizing to yourself and your parents and the world_  
_so goddamn sorry_  
_for something you can't even name._

_You will never stop looking back,_  
_wondering_  
_what if_  
_what if_  
_what_  
_if._

_But you will make a decision—_  
_that I am now certain no twelve-year-old_  
_should ever be forced to make—_  
_and I am telling you,_  
_here,_  
_now._  
_I am proud of you._

—and I forgive you. (source: pencap on tumblr)


	2. Preface

SOPHIE LOOKED TO HER LEFT.

Then she looked to her right.

Any moment now the two sides could converge. And who would win? The Neverseen with their soporidine? The ogres with another deadly plague?

Too many had been lost already.

Jolie.

Kenric.

Mr. Forkle.

And so many more.

The ground trembled beneath Sophie's shoes. Her hands, raised up in the air, felt like weights. She wanted nothing more than to let her hands drop, to concede, to let the species fight it out on their own.

But she couldn't. She had to stop this. She didn't know how, but she had to.

_The spark before the blaze._

_All she had left was trust._

_And now, it was too late._

_It was time to fight fire with fire._

_This is what they want._

_Into the past. Into darkness._

Sophie opened her mouth to speak.


	3. Chapter One

“SORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER,” DEX said as he opened the front door of Rimeshire, wincing as a freezing gust of wind blasted into his face. “Lex manifested about two weeks ago, and he hasn’t quite figured out the whole Froster thing yet.”

“Really? That’s great!” Sophie ducked inside and helped Dex force the door closed.

And it  _ was _ great. Dex’s dad was Talentless, meaning that Dex and his siblings only had a fifty-fifty chance of manifesting an ability. And with the elvin stigma surrounding multiple births, Sophie was sure the triplets had been told they had even less of a chance.

“I’m happy for him,” Dex agreed. “It almost makes this ridiculous weather—and Bex and Rex constantly complaining that it’s their turn to manifest—worth it.”

Right on cue, piercing shrieks sounded as the twelve-year-old triplets ran into the foyer, tripping over themselves and each other.

“SOPHIE’S FINALLY HERE!” Lex hollered. He grabbed her hand, and Sophie gasped at the cold radiating from his hand. Then she noticed the tips of his hair and even his eyelashes were encrusted with ice.

“Am I the last to arrive?” she asked Dex.

He nodded. “Everyone’s already waiting in my room.”

Lex half-dragged her up the stairs, with Rex and Bex following at her heels. Sophie couldn’t help but feel like a sheep being herded.

On the way up, she noticed the banisters were encrusted with ice.

They reached the door to Dex’s bedroom, and the next minute or so was spent trying to open the door just enough to let Sophie and Dex through, but not the triplets. Finally, Dex managed to pull Sophie through the opening and slammed the door shut—accidentally squashing Rex’s hand.

He howled in pain, and Sophie thought she felt the tiniest tremor shake the ground. But it disappeared as soon as the triplets thundered away, calling for their mom.

“It’s about time you showed up,” said a crisp, accented voice. Fitz got up from a chair, his teal eyes twinkling. His cheeks were red from the cold, and somehow that made him even more adorable. He tossed a heavy gold-plated book from hand to hand.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Biana, materializing behind him. She reached over his shoulder and snatched the book from midair. “It’s been less than five minutes.”

Biana was wearing a sequined blue tunic that matched her pretty eyes perfectly. She looked flawless as always. Sophie couldn’t see a trace of the scar that marked her left cheek, which had been covered by a thin layer of makeup.

But even though the scar was hidden, Sophie would never forget seeing Biana lying in a pool of her own blood, half of her face shredded by glass. How she had almost left her behind.

“We can get started now, right?” Linh was standing in the corner, her hand resting against the wall. It took Sophie a few seconds to notice she was melting the frost inching its way up the wallpaper.

Dex shrugged. “Might as well.” He opened the door a crack. “Mom! Can we—”

Before he finished his sentence, seven steaming mugs of cinnacreme appeared on Dex’s desk with a  _ pop _ . Everyone grabbed a mug as fast as possible. Keefe practically lunged for his.

Sophie let her mug warm her hands through her gloves before taking a sip. The snickerdoodle-y goodness tasted almost better than mallowmelt.

“I didn’t know your mom was a Conjurer,” she said to Dex. Juline was a Froster as well, and having a second talent was really rare.

“It seems to run in her family,” said Dex. “But only with the girls, like Edaline and Jolie. My mom really wants Bex to manifest as one. I think she’s hoping it’ll will get her a good job with the Council. The talent’s in high demand.”

Keefe put down his cinnacreme, looking uncomfortable.

Fitz noticed. “Is something wrong?”

“It just feels weird to be talking about talents and jobs and things,” said Keefe. “Especially for the  _ triplets _ . What are they, eleven?”

“Twelve,” said Dex. “They’ve started ability detecting, and their Career Conferences are in just two years. I agree, it’s weird to think about. But we should seriously get started on this.”

Sophie bit back her question of what a Career Conference was as Dex reached into his messenger bag and pulled out Fintan’s cache. The marble-sized glass orb held nine Forgotten Secrets—memories deemed too dangerous for anyone to know. Not even the Councillors knew the secrets in their caches. The knowledge would break their minds and shake the elvin world to its core.

Dex had already figured out that each secret required a different password. Sophie and her friends had agreed to spend an afternoon at Rimeshire to try and guess the passwords—or find a way to bypass them.

Of course, it was all just to distract them from the  _ very distracting _ news that had come three weeks before.

Sophie tried not to think about Alvar. She told herself over and over again that the Black Swan had everything under control, that their Telepaths would still be able to extract the information they needed from his subconscious. It was getting that information back into his  _ conscious _ that was the problem.

Nothing was triggering Alvar’s memories—not words or voices or smells. Physic, the Black Swan’s Physician, had even been trying human remedies, but still nothing was working.

Alvar’s memory loss was an unusual case. His memories hadn’t just been removed. Now he forgot most things as soon as he heard them. Physic could tell him in the morning that his brother’s name was Fitz, and by evening he would have no idea he had a brother.

Alden and Della seemed to be taking it the hardest. They would come to his room in the Stone House every morning and introduce themselves to him. Then the next morning he wouldn’t recognize them at all, and they would have to introduce themselves all over again.

Once, Alvar had made it two days without forgetting his parents’ faces. Both Alden and Della had cried when they had found out he recognized them. But the next day, they had been strangers again.

Sophie was too exhausted already to deal with all of that. So she had let the Black Swan handle Alvar and instead decided to focus on Fintan’s cache, which was much smaller than Alvar, had no weepy parents, and—most importantly—definitely hadn’t lost its memories.

“Bronte gave me a list of possible passwords,” said Dex. He tapped the cache, and a tenth, clear bead Sophie hadn’t noticed before started glowing. The light spread out, then coalesced to make a long list of ordinary-looking words.

Everyone stared at Dex.

“What?”

“Dude.” Keefe pointed at the list suspended in mid-air. “Explain.”

“Oh.” Dex fidgeted with the cache in his hand. The list rippled and blinked, but didn’t disappear. “I put the list in the cache for safekeeping. I accidentally figured out how to add things to the cache while messing around with it. I’ve figured out how to do basically everything you can with this thing, except get into those secrets.”

“These words are all really obvious,” said Sophie, reading the list.  _ Balefire. Pyren. Everblaze. _ “I mean, no offense to Bronte—”

“I don’t get it,” Tam interrupted. “Councillors have passed their caches down to new Councillors for thousands of years. The passwords would have to be something more general, something that everyone on the Council knows. Or else no one would be able to guess them.”

“That’s true,” said Sophie. “And why does Fintan even still have his cache? Didn’t he resign from the Council a long time ago?”

Annoyed that she hadn’t thought of that sooner, Sophie tucked away the frustration into the knot of emotions underneath her ribs.

“Wait.” Dex tapped the cache again, and the list disappeared. “I think I’m getting something.”

As soon as he let go of the cache, it started spinning—slowly at first, then faster and faster.

“That wasn’t me,” Dex said when Sophie started to congratulate him.

Sophie felt a strange tugging at her stomach as she watched the cache spin on Dex’s floor. It was as if the cache was pulling at her knot of emotions, unraveling it slowly. She had never felt anything like that before.

She slammed her hand onto the cache, pushing it into the carpet. The spinning stopped, and the tugging stopped as well. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Come  _ on _ ,” Dex sighed. “It was  _ so _ close to opening.”

“You didn’t feel that?” Sophie asked him. “The tugging?”

“All I felt was that the cache was being fed power, probably from you. And it almost opened,” he added accusingly.

She leaned back on her hands to stop them from shaking. Something about the cache had unnerved her. She hadn’t been able to block it from unraveling her emotions. Even Bronte couldn’t get past her blocking. He’d tried, in her inflicting sessions.

“Please don’t let it do that again,” she said to Dex. “Find another way to open it.”

“Okay,” he said, concern in his eyes. “But I’ve tried everything I can think of. I need another perspective. One that’s not Bronte, because he’s obviously useless.”

“I’m sure you can ask the Black Swan for a partner,” said Linh. “Don’t they have a Technopath?”

Suddenly, the sound of a doorbell reverberated through Rimeshire.

“Oh no,” Sophie whispered. “It’s Physic. She promised she’d give me updates on Alvar. Granite must have told her I was here.”

“Why does that merit an ‘oh no’?” asked Fitz.

“Because—”

“It’s not Physic,” Dex said, cutting off Sophie’s “Because I don’t want to have to deal with Alvar”. He leaned out the window, watching a figure enter through the front door. “It’s… my uncle.”


	4. Chapter Two

"SHHH," DEX WHISPERED. THE SEVEN of them had tiptoed to the top of the stairs. Sophie could feel the ice melt and seep into her shirt as she leaned against the banister.

The elf talking with Juline in the foyer was wearing a midnight blue cape encrusted in sapphires and high-heeled boots that clicked against the white marble floor. He blinked in and out as he walked—a side effect, for lack of a better word, of being a Vanisher.

His hair was a shade darker than Kesler's and was plastered to his head with what must have been a whole tube of hair gel, and his perfect posture reminded Sophie of Lord Cassius. She remembered Kesler had once said something about his estranged siblings.

As Sophie watched, he gestured at the empty space where a vase of marbles had once been—before the triplets had broken it. When Juline explained what had happened to it, he stiffened and scowled.

"So… that's your uncle?"

The disdain in Keefe's voice said it all.

Dex nodded. "He hasn't visited in six—no, seven years. I don't remember him all that well."

"Who is it, Juline?" Kesler's voice rang out from an unseen room.

Juline turned to the elf, who said something to her that Sophie couldn't hear. Then Juline laughed.

"Whoa," said Keefe. "Okay. Wasn't expecting that."

"Come see for yourself!" Juline shouted.

Kesler hurried out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a pink apron patterned with tiny salamanders. He reached up to shake the flour out of his hair—then froze when he saw his brother.

"Cirilo." His voice was guarded. "It's been a while."

Cirilo actually turned his nose up at Kesler. If the situation hadn't been so horrifying, Sophie would have burst out laughing. Everything about him was just so overblown.

"It's  _Lord_  Cirilo now," he said coldly.

The two brothers regarded each other from opposite ends of the foyer for a long moment. The tension was so thick Sophie could almost reach out and touch it.

Then their faces broke into identical dimpled smiles. Kesler opened his arms wide, and Cirilo came across the room for a hug.

At the top of the stairs, Keefe whistled. " _Definitely_  wasn't expecting that."

"How's Sylvia?" Kesler was asking.

"She's doing well, if you ignore the fact that she just rejected everyone on her match list. For the third time."

"Glad to see she's following in her little brother's footsteps. Send her my congratulations."

"I will," said Cirilo. "Everyone misses you, you know. Even Mom and Dad."

"Really?" said Kesler. "Interesting that they all suddenly care about me now that I'm gone."

Cirilo fidgeted with his cape. "Well, enough of that. Where are the kids?" He clapped his hands together, looking relieved that he had changed the subject.

Juline laughed. "Just follow the noise."

Dex poked Sophie in the shoulder as Cirilo, Kesler, and Juline left the foyer.

"Should I go…?"

"Absolutely," Tam said. "That guy's up to something."

Sophie frowned. "He is?"

"I actually agree with Bangs Boy for once," said Keefe. "No one's  _that_  nice."

"He seemed normal to me," said Fitz.

"Maybe," said Biana, "we shouldn't argue about this and just go meet him. Together." She smirked. "After all, it's about time Sophie got to know Dex's family now that they've…" She made a kissy face.

"Ugh, stop it," Sophie moaned, only half-joking.

It had been months since Sophie and Dex's disastrous kiss, and Sophie was starting to feel like she would never hear the end of it. At least she had gotten to the point where she could joke about it. Sort of.

She stole a glance at Dex. He was staring at his shoes, and his face was redder than his hair.

Maybe it was still too soon to joke about it. Even half-joke.

"Come on." Sophie grabbed Dex's hand, and it didn't feel awkward. "Let's go find your uncle."

* * *

Cirilo was in the conservatory when Sophie and her friends found him, chasing Lex and Bex around Juline's lifelike ice sculptures. Rex stood off to the side, his arms folded.

"I'm too old for this," he announced when he saw the group.

"He's lying!" Bex shouted from behind a gigantic ice mammoth. "He's the youngest out of all of us!"

"Only by three minutes!" Rex shot back.

Cirilo stood up straight and adjusted the crest on his cape—which Sophie noticed wasn't the Dizznee crest.

"Is that Dexter Alvin I see?"

Dex put his hands in his pockets and looked down at his shoes again. "It's just Dex, actually."

Cirilo made his way through the conservatory until he was standing directly in front of Dex. "Look at you! You're taller than I am!" He turned to Kesler. "You know, he's the spitting image of Malin when he was Dexter—Dex's age."

"Hopefully that won't extend to his personality," Kesler said tersely. "Or his life decisions."

An awkward silence followed that statement.

"And these must be Dex's friends!" Cirilo said. His eyes darted from Sophie to Fitz to Linh and then back to Sophie. "The Moonlark, of course. And you must be Vackers—the eyes give it away. And you two must be the Songs' children! You look just like your parents."

Tam scowled.

Keefe gave Sophie a look that clearly said,  _Who the heck is this guy?_

But even so, she still wasn't suspicious of Cirilo. He looked nervous, not shady. Now that he was around so many people, he was constantly in motion—fidgeting with his cape, fixing his hair. It only made sense that he would say anything that came to mind. The poor guy had no filter.

"I brought you a present," said Cirilo. He fumbled around in one of the dozens of pockets that lined the bottom edge of his ridiculous cape. "I wanted to get you something, but I didn't know—I mean, I wasn't sure—well, I knew you liked alchemy when I last saw you, but I wasn't sure if you still—"

"Yeah, I love alchemy," Dex finished for him. Sophie sent a silent thank you to him for sparing her from any more secondhand embarrassment that seemed to come whenever Cirilo opened his mouth.

Cirilo pulled out an alchemy kit from his pocket, scattering several glittery trinkets across the smooth floor. Sophie immediately moved to a safe distance away. It was probably best not to let her near anything remotely related to alchemy. She was so bad at it that she had been allowed to replace her alchemy session with an inflicting class after her first year of Foxfire… although the Council's decision to let her drop the subject might have been because Lady Galvin had complained to them after Sophie had accidentally destroyed her pride and joy—her cape. It made Cirilo's jewel-encrusted cape look positively drab.

A thought stirred at the back of Sophie's mind when she thought of Lady Galvin's cape, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was.

"It's like a puzzle," Cirilo was explaining to Dex. "Except there are virtually infinite ways to solve it. Your dad'll be able to help you with it. You could choose to start by turning the elixir orange and seeing what happens next, or freezing it, or turning it orange—I already said that, didn't I?"

"Thanks." Dex looked up from the kit, grinning from ear to ear. "I love it."

Keefe tapped Dex on the shoulder. "Hate to burst your little happiness bubble, Gears," he said, "but why does your uncle have this in his pocket?"

He picked up a marble-sized orb from the floor and held it up between his fingers. Four tiny jewels inside the orb, all of them ringed in black, sparkled in the natural light of the conservatory. Sophie sucked in a breath.

How did Cirilo have a cache?


	5. Chapter Three

"It's not what you think!" Cirilo snatched the cache from Keefe's hand. "And I was instructed—I was told to give it directly to Fitz. And  _only_  to Fitz."

"Told by who?" said Sophie.

"Whom," Cirilo corrected, then blushed. "Sorry. I can't stand—anyway, it was Livvy Sonden who gave the cache to me. I assume you know who she is?"

Sophie nodded. Livvy had revealed her secret identity as Physic months ago.

"Wait," she said. "Does this mean you're a part of the Black Swan?"

She had a theory… but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't associate Cirilo with Wraith, the silver-caped Collective member. Not only Wraith's ghostlike voice not match his at all, but Cirilo was way too short—even in heels.

"More or less," said Cirilo. "I know of the order through Livvy, but I haven't sworn fealty and I don't plan to. I'm more of a messenger."

"She also told me Fitz would be here," he continued. "And… well, I thought it was about time to pay my brother a visit. I'd been delaying it."

He handed the cache to Fitz, who held it away from him like it could explode at any moment.

"What's in it?" he asked.

"Memories," said Cirilo. "I mean, of course it's memories. They're your brother's. Alvar's."

Fitz dropped the cache. It bounced twice before rolling harmlessly to a stop at Sophie's feet.

Inwardly, Sophie sighed. She had been dreading having to face Alvar for weeks. Even hearing news about him made her stomach feel all oogy inside. She kneaded the feeling into her knot of emotions.

"She's trying something new that she's hoping will cure his amnesia," Cirilo said. "She thinks the new memories he's creating every day are pushing his old ones—the ones he can't find—even further down into his subconscious. So she removed those new memories and put them in that cache. She thinks that if there's less weight on top of his old memories, it'll be easier to coax them back up to the surface."

He bent over to pick up the cache, accidentally stepping on his own cape  _and_  knocking into Sophie.

"Speaking of—er, never mind. Dex, do you know what your mom did with that vase of marbles I sent her?"

Dex shrugged. "No idea. It sacrificed itself to save your yeti statue, though. You should be proud."

Cirilo's face lit up. "You kept the yeti statue?"

Dex opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked desperately at his dad for help.

"Of course!" said Kesler. "We love it! It reminded us of… um…"

"Our home!" Juline rescued him. "The snowy mountains, where all sorts of beautiful animals live."

Bex stopped running after her brother. She tugged on her finger. "How does the Sweaty Statue remind you of beautiful animals?"

Kesler buried his face in his hands. But Bex wasn't finished.

"It looks like a deformed goblin that drank too many Hairoids. And it stinks."

Juline groaned.

"It  _does_  kind of look like Gigantor, though," Keefe whispered in Sophie's ear. "Where is he, anyway?"

"Sandor took the day off to go to Atlantis with Grizel," she whispered back. "He made me promise  _five times_  that I wouldn't do anything dangerous."

"Look at that. With Ro still on bed rest—"

"Ro's still on bed rest?"

"She kept trying to get up and walk around. It reopened all the internal wounds. Now she's stuck in bed for another  _month_. Bullhorn's had to physically restrain her from sitting up multiple times. I think she set her flesh-eating bacteria on him once."

Sophie tried to imagine Bullhorn, Elwin's not-so-imposing banshee, being able to pin Ro's two hundred pounds of muscle onto her hospital bed. She couldn't.

"As I was saying," Keefe continued, "With Ro still on bed rest, it's like we have no supervision at all." He lifted an eyebrow and leaned on Sophie's shoulder.

Before she could figure out what to say in response to that, she felt something freezing cold seeping into her shoe. She gave an extremely undignified squeal.

"Sorry," Linh said softly. The water she had taken from Dex's wall was dripping through her fingers. "I thought I had it under control. I don't know what happened."

She flicked her wrist to call the water back to her, but it didn't move. It had turned to ice.

"Oh! I almost forgot." Cirilo fumbled with a pink leaping crystal. Sophie had only seen a crystal that color once before—the pink layer on top of the jewel added extra protection to the leap, meaning that they were only used to travel to  _very_  secret places… like Black Swan hideouts.

"Mr. Forkle requested he meet with you seven alone. He said it was urgent," said Cirilo. "And before you say—I mean, before you ask—I don't know where this crystal leads."

He handed the crystal to Sophie.

"Ready?" she said. Her friends nodded.

She held the crystal to the light.

* * *

They appeared in Magnate Leto's office.

"That was kind of anticlimactic, don't you think?" Keefe said to the black-haired elf sitting in his high-backed chair.

Even though she had known his secret for months now, it was still hard for Sophie to wrap her head around the fact that the principal of Foxfire was the same person as wrinkly Mr. Forkle. And it was even harder to wrap her head around the fact that this was only  _half_  of Mr. Forkle she was seeing. It was so easy to forget that it had been his identical twin who had died in Lumenaria, stabbed in the side by Gethen. But the proof was there, in the form of a Wanderling in Trolltunga—and, of course, in the living Magnate Leto standing in front of her.

He shrugged. "Anticlimactic, perhaps, but necessary. Your registry feeds are being closely monitored, and the crystal protects this whole room. It would be suspicious if they showed you at Foxfire while school was out of session."

"You could have just scrambled the feeds," said Tam. "The Black Swan has done it before."

"Only for short periods of time," Magnate Leto reminded them. "Which is a moot point, because our Technopath is… not being cooperative at the moment. She's in one of her moods where she's launched a crusade against elvin pseudo-capitalism or heteronormative marital expectations or whatever else she's decided to be angry at this time."

"Oh," Dex mumbled. "Then I guess she wouldn't want to be my partner."

"You're looking for a partner?"

Dex nodded.

Magnate Leto nodded as well, then smiled a little. "That can be arranged. I actually believe you two would get along quite well."

That made Dex smile. He twirled the cache in his fingers, then caught it in his other hand. "By the way, did you want this back?"

Magnate Leto waved it away. "You might as well keep it for now. Fintan is still feeding us false information. Nothing he's suggested has worked on our duplicate of the cache. The Council is annoyed out of their minds."

"But what did you need to tell us?" said Fitz. "Cirilo said it was urgent."

"Yes." Magnate Leto got up from his chair and placed a hand on the wall of his office. "I was in here, preparing my office for the start of the school year. Just some basic cleaning and tidying up. That's when I found this."

He pounded on the wall with his fist. The sound his knuckles made was hollow.

"A secret compartment," Sophie realized.

"But I can't for the life of me get into it," he said. "I was hoping Dex could do it."

Dex shook his head. "That's not tech. Or if it is, it's nothing I've ever seen before."

"Wait a minute," said Tam. "Dame Alina had this office before you, right? And she's a Beguiler." He turned to Magnate Leto. "Do you still have the mirrors she had all over the walls?"

"I'm sure they're in storage somewhere. But they're all cracked from the explosion," said Magnate Leto. He slid open a panel in the floor and started rummaging.

"Found it!" he said. "Well, not all of it. I found a piece." He handed a sharp-looking shard of mirror to Tam.

"Thanks." Tam positioned the mirror shard on the wall. "Can someone hold this for me?"

Linh secured it in place with her finger and thumb.

Tam waved his arm, pulling shadows from every corner of the room. Then he shoved the shadows into the mirror.

The shadows rebounded and scattered across the room. Sophie felt a chill blow through her mind before the shadows returned to their usual places.

Magnate Leto gasped.

The mirror shard was now completely black… or was it? Looking closer, Sophie saw it wasn't black at all. The mirror was gone. In its place was a mirror-shaped hole in the wall.

She stole a glance at Keefe. He looked slightly sick.

"Just what I thought," said Tam, inspecting the hole in the wall. "Beguilers manipulate emotions using shadowvapor. She found a way to manipulate not just emotions, but the real world."

"What does that mean?" Biana whispered.

Tam tugged on his bangs angrily. "I don't know. No other Shade or Beguiler has ever gotten close to doing this. Well, except whoever did the trick with the Lodestar mirror. And maybe my mom. Dunno if she counts, though."

Magnate Leto sank back into his chair. "Which means Dame Alina made the Cimmerian, which means she's a member of the Neverseen."

Sophie frowned. "I feel like we're jumping to conclusions here."

"No, we're not." Keefe's face was pale. "I've seen this trick before. I've seen a mirror like that once." He scratched his head. "I don't know why I didn't realize it was weird before. There were a ton of mirrors in that house. Alina must have been storing her extras there—"

"Whose house was this, Keefe?"

"Alvar's."


	6. Chapter Four

“ALVAR’S JUST BEHIND THIS DOOR,” Physic said. “I keep trying to get him to come outside, even for a little bit, but he won’t listen. It’s like he’s afraid of leaving. Afraid of healing.”

She adjusted her purple Mardi Gras-style mask—not that the disguise mattered anymore. Everyone knew the Physician’s alternate identity was Livvy Sonden, one of the nurses working in Atlantis and Quinlin’s soon-to-be ex-wife.

“Are you sure you want to see him?” she said, looking at Fitz. “Your mother expressed some… concerns.”

“I won’t get angry this time,” he said. “Or even if I do get angry, I promise not to break anything. Or yell at anyone. Or—”

“Alright, alright, I believe you.”

But Sophie wasn’t so sure. She could see the pained expression on his face.

Physic placed her hand on the doorknob. “Are you ready?”

Sophie suddenly felt a wave of panic wash over her at the thought of facing Alvar. “Um, I think I’ll wait outside.”

Fitz looked hurt. “We were supposed to do this together.”

“Hey. If Foster wants to wait outside, that’s her call,” said Keefe.

“I just don’t understand why she’s the one getting all nauseated over this when  _ my _ brother is behind that door—”

“You don’t know what she’s going through. You don’t know what anyone is going through!”

Sophie wished Keefe and Fitz would stop talking about her like she wasn’t right there next to them. It made her feel even worse than she already did. Her insides felt all mixed up into a knot.

She wondered if she was going to faint.

“I have a solution,” Mr. Forkle—back in his ruckleberry disguise—interrupted. “Since Miss Foster would prefer not to visit Mr. Vacker, why don’t I take her and Mr. Dizznee to meet our Technopath? Then we can see if she and Mr. Dizznee are willing to work together.”

Sophie breathed a sigh of relief at Mr. Forkle’s suggestion. Her insides returned to regular working order. She nodded.

“Is that alright with you, Dex?”

He shrugged. “I’d rather be there than here, honestly.”

“But shouldn’t you be here? In case we learn anything important?” Fitz asked Mr. Forkle.

In response, Mr. Forkle tossed him his golden orb—the device that his twin had used to share their memories. “You can brief me on everything that happens using this.”

As they left, Sophie resisted the urge to look back over her shoulder. She didn’t want to see Fitz’s hurt expression as she leaped away. She couldn’t help but feel like she’d let him down—even though the panic still coursing through her veins was shouting at her to GET AWAY FROM ALVAR RIGHT NOW, WHO CARES IF HE HAS NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE.

Was there something wrong with her?

* * *

 

Sophie had expected the Black Swan’s Technopath to work in a cluttered studio overflowing with blueprints or a workshop filled with crazy gadgets à la Belle’s father in  _ Beauty and the Beast _ . Even a dingy, mad-scientist-y basement wouldn’t have been beyond her imagination.

So she was pleasantly surprised when their light leap deposited the three of them onto a grassy path lined with white stones. The path led to a tiny one-room workshop made of glass panels like a greenhouse. Sophie could see a distorted figure through the translucent walls.

“Shayda!” Mr. Forkle knocked on the front door. “Shayda, it’s m—”

“I know who you are, Forkle,” a voice called out from inside. “And I’m coming.”

Dex gaped at Mr. Forkle. “Is that  _ Shayda Adel _ ?”

Sophie recognized the name. “Isn’t that the girl whose foot Ro broke?”

Mr. Forkle nodded. “One and the same.”

“You’re kidding me.” Dex was shaking his head. “She’s in the lap of the Council. Literally.”

“Her aunt is Councillor Zarina,” Mr. Forkle explained. “And her parents are two powerful Emissaries. You’ll find she’s not quite as buddy-buddy with the Council as she seems—”

The glass door flew open.

The first thing Sophie noticed about Shayda was her hair. Her giant brown curls bounced every which way. Even the pink scarf wrapped around her head wasn’t enough to contain the massive amount of hair she had. Her bright turquoise eyes glared at Mr. Forkle behind round, Harry Potter-like glasses.

“I told you, I can’t come back to work yet. I’m doing something important.”

“What you are doing is admirable, Miss Adel,” Mr. Forkle said mildly. “But perhaps you would reconsider returning to the Black Swan if we gave you a partner.”

Shayda laughed. “Who’d you find for me, the Neverseen’s Technopath?”

Mr. Forkle’s lips turned up slightly. “Mr. Dizznee, in fact. And before you ask, he came to me first.”

She looked at Dex for a long moment. “Are you the one who made the ability restrictor?”

Dex looked down at his shoes. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

She nodded. “I’ve been there. Come in.” She took a few steps back to let them inside.

Shayda motioned for them to sit at a small round table. She swept a pile of wires from the table. They clattered to the floor.

As Sophie passed by her on the way to sit down, she noticed Shayda was way shorter than her huge hair made her look. Her forehead barely reached Sophie’s chin.

“What are you staring at?” she asked Sophie.

“I’ve never met an elf who needed glasses before.”

“Oh, I don’t need them. I just wear them so I can do this.” She took off her glasses and gave Sophie a withering glare. “I do love dramatic effect.”

Mr. Forkle rolled his eyes.

“So.” She rested her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together. “You are obviously in a dire situation.”

“How do you know?” Dex asked.

“Because the Black Swan wouldn’t be coming to me of all people if the situation wasn’t dire. So spill the beans.”

Dex pulled the cache out of his messenger bag. “This used to belong to Fintan.”

She took the cache from him and peered at it carefully. “I see what the problem is. You can’t open it.”

Mr. Forkle nodded. “And Fintan is being less than helpful. We were hoping you knew how to open it, Miss Adel. If you’ve seen this sort of thing before.”

Shayda shook her head. “The tech is super old—I doubt I was even alive when the security measures were added. Have you tried breaking it open?”

Dex frowned. “Breaking it?”

“Physically opening it. Like this.”

She slammed it against the table. Everyone else winced as they heard an audible  _ craaaack _ .

Shayda held it up to the light. There was a hairline crack on the cache’s surface.

“Stop looking at me like that. The outside is just protection. The jewels on the inside carry the actual secrets. It’s those jewels that we want.”

She stared intently at the cache. “And it’s… weird. It almost feels like another species programmed the firewall. But I really have no idea. I wasn’t involved in the making of this.”

“I felt that too!” Dex exclaimed, at the same time Sophie asked, “What do you mean, you weren’t involved in the making of the cache?”

Shayda raised an eyebrow at Mr. Forkle. “Can I tell them?”

“Well, now there’ll be no way out of it. Miss Foster hates being kept in the dark.”

Shayda smiled sweetly at Sophie. “I wasn’t involved in the making of that particular cache, but I’ve been the Neverseen’s head Technopath for two years.”

“WHAT?” Sophie and Dex shouted in unison.

“Calm down, chill out,” she said. “The Black Swan planted me in the Neverseen’s ranks when I was thirteen. I’ve been sabotaging their work, putting trackers in everything and programming tiny flaws into their gadgets. The Neverseen rely almost entirely on me now. They’ve neglected their talents and skills in favor of machines. One day something of theirs is going to break, and everything will come crashing down.”

“Cool,” Dex breathed.

“I’m a precocious kid, I know. I also know that you want to say something, Forkle.”

He pointed to the cache in Shayda’s hands. “Are you in?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “I always love a challenge.” She took off her glasses. “Almost as much as I love dramatic effect.”


	8. Chapter Five

“BEFORE I TELL YOU WHAT happened with Alvar, you have to promise not to yell at me.”

Sophie stared at Fitz. “A million scenarios are running through my head right now, and none of them are good.”

“I promise it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

“I’ll decide that for myself, Mr. Vacker,” Mr. Forkle frowned.

“I may have probed Alvar’s mind—”

Sophie caught herself right before shouting, “WHAT?” She tugged out an eyelash instead.

“—but he’s still okay. I checked his mind again after I did the probe. He doesn’t have his memory back. But he’s not—you know.”

_ Broken. _

“Well thank goodness for that,” said Mr. Forkle. “Mr. Vacker, that was a very risky move. Had you ever probed a mind before today?”

“No…”

“It’s an incredibly complex and advanced skill taught only in Level Eight.”

“I know.”

“You are a few months away from beginning Level  _ Six _ .”

Fitz looked down at his lap. “Sorry. But I was able to do it. That must count for something.”

“You were lucky. Don’t do it again until you’re in the Silver Tower.”

“If our world even survives that long,” Physic muttered from the corner of the room. Mr. Forkle shot her a look, which she returned without flinching.

“What did you find in Alvar’s mind?” Sophie asked Fitz.

“Everything,” he said. “His old memories aren’t just being buried underneath new memories—they’re being held down by a layer of shadowvapor. I found all his memories beneath that layer, but I couldn’t pull them back to the surface. They were right there, and I couldn’t bring them back.” He buried his face in his hands.

“Alvar’s memories showed that Alina came around his house a lot,” said Keefe. “The mirrors were for her to practice on.”

“When he found out Alina was working with Vespera, she turned on him,” Biana continued. “She used her shadowvapor trick, except she forced those shadows into his mind instead of her mirrors. Then she took him to Vespera, who marked him with soporidine.”

“So she’s not working for the Neverseen,” said Sophie. “She’s with Vespera.”

“I think she’s with both,” said Tam. “Acting as a sort of intermediary between Vespera, the Neverseen, and the Council. Without any of them knowing she’s involved with the other two. Except the Neverseen knows she’s part of the Council. But Vespera definitely doesn’t, based on Alvar’s memory. Wow, that’s confusing.”

“What my twin is  _ trying _ to say,” said Linh, “is that Alina is operating on her own terms, and we’re not sure whose side she’s on.”

“Except our side,” Keefe interjected. “She’s definitely not on our side.”

“Has she ever been?” Sophie mumbled.

“Can you show us the memory?” Dex asked Fitz.

Fitz spun the orb around his fingers, and it leaped from his hands into the air. It suspended there for a second, then projected an image onto the opposite wall.

_ A blurry scene blinked into view. Alden was peering over a very tiny Alvar swaddled in a blanket, a huge smile on his face. _

“Wait a second.” Fitz spun the orb again, and Alvar’s memories sped up like he had pressed the fast-forward button. “I recorded all of my brother’s memories on here, just in case something small turned out to be important. That was his very first memory. What we need is around twenty years later in the timeline.”

“You’ve gotten good at telepathy,” Sophie said as she watched Fitz expertly sift through a lifetime’s worth of memories.

“Nah,” Fitz said. “You’ll always be better than me.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I have to divide my time between all of my talents, so I don’t practice telepathy much anymore.”

“Foster, do you even hear yourself?” said Keefe. “It doesn’t matter if you practice or not. You pick up every new skill you learn like  _ that _ .” He snapped his fingers. “It’s almost like you were born to make sure the Fitzster doesn’t get too full of himself.”

Fitz rolled his eyes. But he was smiling as he scrolled through the memories.

“Everyone needs practice in order to improve,” Mr. Forkle said gently. “No matter what Mr. Sencen says, Miss Foster, do  _ not _ neglect your telepathy. The last thing our world needs is for your most important ability to become rusty.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Tam said to Linh. “Maybe you just need to practice more.”

“I  _ have _ been practicing,” she said. “But my control is just getting worse and worse.”

Mr. Forkle’s eyes widened. “How long have you been having issues with your hydrokinesis?”

“Since Atlantis. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“You shouldn’t worry about it,” Mr. Forkle said, reminding Sophie of Alden’s favorite sentence. “But it’s probably time you got some real lessons. I’ll ask our Hydrokinetic if she’s willing to help you out.”

Linh smiled slightly. “Thank you.”

“Got it!” Fitz said triumphantly. He tapped the cache, and the memory began.

_ Alvar was staring at himself. He could see Alina behind him in the mirror’s reflection, and he knew she wished he was someone else—someone who had teal eyes and was about a hundred years older. _

_ “What’s the meaning of this, Alina?” _

_ She pouted her perfect lips slightly. “The meaning of what?” _

_ “This.” Alvar reached into a mirror-shaped hole in the wall and pulled out a tiny bottle. “There are hundreds of them.” _

_ “They’re nothing.” But the look in Alina’s eyes said the opposite. _

_ “That’s a lie. This is poison, another one of the ogres’ messed-up chemistry experiments. I bet you have another case of them hidden away in the walls of Foxfire. Do you know how irresponsible it is to have this much of it just lying around?” _

_ “That’s—I was—I was told to keep it there. By—by Fintan.” _

_ “Fintan knows the dangers of soporidine. He would never order this much to be cultivated.” _

_ Alina’s eyes hardened. “You’re right. Fintan—” _

_ “Was this Umber’s idea? Or Ruy’s?” _

_ “—doesn’t have the spine,” she finished. _

_ Indignation flared in Alvar when he heard that. “Fintan’s a hero.” _

_ “Fintan is a coward,” she spat back. “And he’s irrelevant now, anyway. It’s time for a change in leadership.” _

_ Realization spread across Alvar’s reflection. “It was her idea.” _

_ The memory switched to the scene at the crumbling Lumenaria castle. Fintan had thrown his cloak over the woman they had broken out of prison, and he refused to tell Alvar who she was. _

_ The mirrors returned as Alvar pushed away the memory. _

_ “She’s crazy.” _

_ “She’s exactly the opposite, in fact. Logical to a fault. That will be her downfall.” _

_ “Whose side are you even on?” he said. “Wait, don’t answer that. I’ll knock you out before you can betray anyone else.” _

_ “You don’t want to do that,” said Alina. “Break that bottle, and you risk inhaling the soporidine yourself. And if you ingest even an ounce of that stuff… well, it may kill you.” _

_ “I know how soporidine works!” He tightened his grip on the bottle. _

_ Alina shook her head sadly. “You really don’t want to do that,” she repeated. _

_ Alvar frowned. Alina was right. He  _ didn’t _ want to use the soporidine on her. She was doing the right thing, getting rid of Fintan. And… he might have been a little in love with her. _

_ He felt his grip on the bottle relaxing. _

_ Then shadowvapor punctured his consciousness, and he felt his memories slipping away. _

The projection went dark.

“And that’s all there is,” Fitz said. He handed the orb to Mr. Forkle.

There was a long silence as everyone tried to process what they had just seen.

Linh was the first person to speak up. She twisted her silver strands of hair around her fingers as she asked one very important question.

“Sophie,” she said, “what do we do?”

Sophie suddenly became very aware of everyone looking at her, waiting for her to tell them what to do. She felt the panic rise up in her again, threatening to tear her knot of emotions apart. If she faced her fear, she knew it would win.

“This isn’t our problem,” she said. “We have Vespera to deal with, and Fintan’s cache still isn’t opened, and Prentice is awake, and school is starting again soon, and there are a million things we have to do already. Let’s leave this for now. Alina won’t kill anyone.”

“Um, she’s already put two people into comas,” said Tam.

“And both of them are awake now,” Sophie said. “We need to focus on one problem at a time. Now isn’t the time to worry about Alina.”

Mr. Forkle got up from his chair, signaling that everyone was dismissed. Everyone started walking toward the door except for Sophie, who was still thinking. Fitz stared hard at her as he passed by.

“Do you have something to say to me?”

Fitz shook his head. “I just hope you made the right choice.”

He closed the door behind him.


	9. Chapter Six

_One problem at a time._

Sophie rummaged through pile after pile of junk in Edaline’s office—which she liked to call the Place Where Things Go To Die. So many stacks of boxes and novels and random knickknacks were scattered around the room that Sophie could barely see the floor.

She pushed a huge bin of unopened letters out of her way. She dug her arms deep into a box and felt something scratchy.

“Aha!” she shouted, pulling out a white wedding veil. The fragile piece of tulle had been made for Jolie, but she had never gotten to wear it.

Sophie inspected the veil, which had hundreds of tiny clear beads woven through it. They sparkled in the dusty sunlight. No one would notice if she took just one, right? Edaline never went through Jolie’s stuff anyway.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said to Iggy, who was gazing at her reproachfully. “The beads are the right size. And it’s not like anyone is ever going to use this.”

She pinched one bead between her fingers and pulled. The bead came off with a _pop_.

With her other hand, she opened her telepathy textbook and flipped to the very end. She winced as the paper sliced across her ungloved index finger, drawing blood. But she found the page she was looking for.

 _Caches And Their Faculties_ , read the subject heading.

Iggy tilted his head at the page with an unimpressed expression on his feathery green face.

“I told you, stop looking at me like that. One problem at a time, remember? I won’t get anything done if I have to focus on a million things at once.”

Sophie balled her fist around the bead and closed her eyes, bringing to mind the instructions in her book. She imagined her memories floating through her mind, like bottles bobbing across a quiet sea.

But when she tried to grab them, they vanished.

Sophie opened her eyes. She took a deep breath. Then she tried again.

This time she imagined her memories as tropical bats flying through a tranquil jungle. But as soon as her fingers touched their wings, they turned into colored glass and broke apart.

“Argh!” Iggy jumped at Sophie’s growl of annoyance. She instantly felt bad, and she tried to give him a soothing smile.

“It’s okay. Third time’s the charm, right?”

Iggy blinked once. Then he sneezed, feathers flying everywhere. Which gave Sophie an idea.

This time, she didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she got down onto her stomach and rested her chin on her hands. She stared hard at Iggy, pretending that each of her memories was a single barb on his feathers. She picked out one feather to be dedicated to all her memories of Alina, and another for Vespera, on and on until she had assigned every one of her problems to a feather except for the Neverseen.

Iggy sneezed again, and the feathers she had chosen flew into the air. She held up the bead, and the feathers traveled toward it like the bead was a beacon.

When they touched the bead, they disappeared. But for each feather, a single black-rimmed jewel was now suspended inside the makeshift cache.

Perfect.

Sophie knew the jewels in the cache held problems she would need to address, someday. But for now, she couldn’t remember what they were.

She looked up from the cache and noticed that Iggy wasn’t green and feathery anymore. His fur was jet-black and shiny like a river stone.

* * *

 “We should take these down.”

Sophie reached up and started tearing down the scraps of paper that Keefe had taped to his bedroom walls. This was Keefe’s own personal memory log, scattered across the plaster. Everything he remembered about Lady Gisela or the Lodestar Initiative, he jotted it down onto whatever writing surface happened to be closest to him and taped it to his wall.

“Hey!” Keefe snatched his notes from her hands. “I need those.”

She grabbed them back. “Do you really? Need them? Photographic memory, remember?”

“I can make connections between the memories better if they’re written out in front of me like this.”

“Keefe, look at these. ‘Why did she make them test me twice to see if I’d manifested as a Conjurer?’ ‘Why was the box she gave me made of the same material as the Archetype key?’” she read aloud. “These are tiny details. They don’t mean anything. And they’re driving you crazy.”

“You never know…”

Sophie held up a tissue with what was basically a grocery list scrawled messily on it. “I promise, the foods that your mom pressured you to eat when you were seven aren’t part of her grand plan for world domination.”

He sighed. “Maybe not. But what’s the harm in keeping it just in case?”

“It’s clutter.” She crumpled the list in her hand. “And it’s distracting.”

“Distracting from what? This is actually what I’m supposed to be working on.”

Sophie tugged out an eyelash. This was harder than she had thought it would be. “Not anymore. We have to focus on one problem at a time. Right now, the Neverseen are the most urgent problem. We need to find out what they’re doing with the efflorescence.”

Keefe put his hands on her shoulders, and Sophie realized she was shaking with tension.

“Better idea. Why don’t you let me keep working on this, and you and Fitz can focus on the Neverseen? I work best alone anyway.”

She laughed. “We both know that’s not true.” Her smile faded as she saw his expression was serious. “You’re not joking.”

He looked away, but didn’t let go of her. “I think that now, we have to be honest with each other. And not joke around as much.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You really won’t mind if I go to Fitz and leave you out of this?”

“Not at all. Fitz is my best friend,” said Keefe. “And… Sophitz isn’t so bad, now that I think about it.”

“Hey, there’s no need to go that far. Team Foster-Keefe will _always_ be the best.”

He smiled, and Sophie finally felt her shoulders relaxing. One of Keefe’s hands traveled from her shoulder to her hand. She prepared for the warmth of his hand against her glove, but his fingers closed around the crumpled papers instead. He gently pried them from her grip.

“Focus on the Neverseen, and stop destroying my room,” he said. “I can handle my mom on my own. Trust me, Foster.”


	10. Chapter Seven

“What’s going on here?”

Fitz was standing in the doorway, one eyebrow raised.

Sophie pulled away from Keefe quickly. “Nothing.”

“O-kay.” He looked from Sophie to Keefe, then back at Sophie. “Dex and Shayda found something.”

Keefe raised an eyebrow to match Fitz. “Already?”

“Yeah. Mr. Forkle said it’s urgent.” He held up a pathfinder with a clear crystal on the end. “We have to go. Right now.”

* * *

 

“Sophie, wait up.”

Standing in the doorway to Shayda’s workshop, she turned around at the sound of Fitz’s voice. He motioned toward the forest surrounding the grassy clearing.

“You go ahead,” she said to Tam and Linh, who were right behind her. Then she went back down the path to where Fitz was waiting. He led her into the trees.

“We need to talk.”

“Maybe we could talk  _ after _ this thing that you said was super urgent?” Sophie couldn’t hide the annoyance in her voice.

“It’ll be quick, I promise. What was going on with you and Keefe when I walked in?”

“Nothing!” she huffed. “I mean, we were just figuring out plans.”

“And those plans are…?”

“Splitting up. Keefe will tackle the Lodestar Initiative and his mom, and the two of us will focus on the Neverseen. I was going to ask Biana and the twins if they were willing to deal with Vespera and Alina.”

“Splitting up?” Fitz repeated incredulously. “What happened to us staying together? Aren’t we a team? I’m sorry, Sophie, but that is one of the worst ideas that has ever come out of your mouth.”

She was at a loss for words. She decided to just tell it like it was. “I find that extremely rude.”

“At least I’m being honest with you, like Cognates should!” he said. “That’s more than you’ve been doing.”

“I just  _ told _ you what the plan was—”

“But you won’t tell me what your deal is with my brother.”

“Alvar?” She frowned. “What’s important about him?”

“This isn’t the time for jokes—”

“I’m not joking. I don’t know anything about Alvar.” She thought hard. “The last time I saw him was during midterms two years ago. He was late to dinner at your house.”

Fitz’s eyes grew wide. “Someone’s been messing with your memories.”

“Wait.” The realization suddenly dawned on Sophie. “He’s in the cache, isn’t he?”

“What cache?”

“This—this one.” She rummaged around in her backpack until she found the bead. She held it up so Fitz could see it. “I made a cache for myself. It’s so I don’t become preoccupied with everything at once.”

“And it works. It really works.” He stared at the cache and shook his head in disbelief. “Do you know how hard it is to make one of those?”

“Probably around the same level as probing someone’s mind, right?”

He laughed. “I guess Keefe was right. You’re still better than me.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled under her breath. “It took me three tries.”

“What was that?”

“We should get back to the group,” said Sophie. “They’ll be wondering where we’ve gone.”

They started heading back up the path.

“You know,” said Fitz, “if there’s anything bothering you, you can tell me. We have to be open with each other. That’s what being Cognates is all about.”

Sophie nodded. “Of course. But nothing’s bothering me.”

He held the door open for her and she stepped inside, all too aware that she was lying to her own Cognate. She buried the oogy feeling deep within her knot of emotions.

“Guess who finally decided to show up,” Shayda said as they sat down. “Is Biana with you?”

“She went to the library in Atlantis,” said Fitz. “She thought there was something we might have missed about Vespera.”

Mr. Forkle frowned. “She went alone?”

“Woltzer’s with her.”

He nodded and settled back down.

Sophie looked around the room. It had changed since she had seen it last. Even more wires were scattered everywhere, and they occasionally lit up in different colors. They were all connected to Fintan’s cache, which had been split in half and was resting on a metal worktable in the corner.

Mr. Forkle cleared his throat. “So. We have a problem. Miss Adel, could you explain to everyone else what it is?”

“I visited Ruy Ignis today,” Shayda said. “The Neverseen don’t need me to be around much anymore—all the technology is basically self-sustained. It was the first time I had seen Ruy in a long while. Which was a mistake on my part.” She twisted the end of her scarf nervously.

“He told me some stuff. There’s been a coup of sorts since Fintan was captured. Trix is leading, for now. Based on how Ruy was talking about it, he won’t be leader for much longer.”

“That’s good, right?” said Tam. “If the Neverseen are fighting amongst themselves, they’ll be distracted. And weakened.”

“Ruy is fed up with the fighting. A few others are, too. They have this crazy idea that they’re going to finish what Fintan started. He showed me the plans and maps and things. Then he asked me to join him.”

“Did you?” Keefe asked.

“Of course not. I made some excuse, left and hailed Forkle right away. Unlike some people, I drop the act when I’m about to cross a line,” she said pointedly.

Keefe looked down at his shoes.

“Do you remember what the plans were?” Linh said to Shayda. “If you do, Fitz or Sophie can project them.”

“I’m one step ahead of you.” She pounded the table with her fist, and a screen appeared on it. Her fingers flew as she typed password after password, like an expert burglar opening a multi-layered lockbox. “Ruy had the plans stored in a memory log issued by the Neverseen. That means everything on the log is instantly copied and sent to the Neverseen’s big database—which I have the codes to. From there, Dex was able to break into Ruy’s file and access the plans. Here you go.”

She tapped the screen twice, and images started to appear.

Pages and pages of notes, each page titled with the word ‘CRITERION’. Diagrams of gadgets Sophie had never seen before. Not just ordinary maps, but full color photographs of buildings and streets and—wait.

There was one house present in every picture. A Tudor-style house that was hauntingly familiar. In one of the photos, a fluffy gray cat was grooming itself in front of a window box. That was all the evidence Sophie needed.

The Neverseen hadn’t given up. They were still trying to kidnap her human parents.


	12. Chapter Eight

"We have to protect the house."

They were back in Magnate Leto's office, though Mr. Forkle hadn't changed out of his ruckleberry disguise. The plans had been printed out and were scattered across his desk.

The rest of the Collective had joined them, still in full disguise as well. The goblins had been also alerted, and they were lined up on the wall, keeping a lookout. Biana was watching from Sandor's Imparter.

"And if Ruy gets through our defenses?" said Squall. "Sophie's family will be trapped. They'll be sitting ducks. We have to get them to safety before it's too late."

Granite shook his head. "We can't uproot their lives like that. Their memories would have to be wiped and replaced again once this is all over. It'll be a huge ordeal."

"We should alert the Council," Wraith said.

"Absolutely not," Mr. Forkle replied.

"Then we should at least tell Councillor Oralie."

Mr. Forkle started to shake his head, but Sophie cut him off. "I think that's a good idea."

"I'll hail Oralie." Granite took out his Imparter. "How much is she allowed to know?"

Blur threw his hands up in the air. "Tell the Council, don't tell the Council, it doesn't matter!" he said. "You're going about this all wrong. Think about it. We know exactly where Ruy will be in—" he checked the plans— "two days. We have the chance to take out one of the leaders of the freaking Neverseen!"

There was dead silence.

Granite was the first to speak. "Are you suggesting we attack Ruy?"

"Stage an ambush," said Blur. "Ruy and his followers will be captured before Sophie's family notices a thing. No defenses or memory wiping needed."

"But any sort of attack would put the Fosters in danger," Biana spoke up from the Imparter. "I say we sneak them out of their house a few hours before the kidnapping is scheduled. Once they're safe, we can take down Ruy."

Mr. Forkle nodded approvingly. "Good solution, Miss Vacker. Now why don't you and your friends find something to do—maybe start preparing your lockers for next year? The Black Swan has an ambush to plan."

* * *

Sophie kicked the door of her locker. It crashed shut with a hollow clang.

"I can't believe they kicked us out again!"

"If it makes you feel any better, we're kicked out too," Sandor grumbled. The other goblins muttered their agreement.

"Welcome to the club," said Shayda. "Forkle never tells me anything. He claims it's so I won't have all the information if I get captured, yadda yadda. It's ridiculous."

"I suggest we hide reekrods underneath Magnate Leto's desk chair," said Keefe. "Or something worse, like gulon spit. Or alicorn poop. Foster, do you think you could get Glitter Butt to show up here the next time she needs to go to the bathroom?"

"I don't know," Sophie said sharply. She was still annoyed about being kicked out. "Silveny has been acting weird lately."

"I wish I was there with you guys," Biana whined from the Imparter. "I could hide in Magnate Leto's office and listen."

"Hey, at least they let  _you_  in for a little bit."

Everyone jumped as the triplets stepped out from around the corner.

"Our mom just dropped us off in an empty classroom and told us to play," said Bex.

"Even though Dex got to go with her," Rex added. "I wonder why that is."

Dex groaned. "It's because you're not Black Swan members. And you're  _twelve_."

"But I'm a Froster," said Lex. He tossed his hair, letting snow crystals fall to the ground. "If you catch these hands, I could destroy you."

"No, you couldn't," Rex said matter-of-factly. "When you conjure ice, it never goes where you want it to go."

"Maybe I've gotten better at it." Lex held up his hands, palms out. "You wanna try me?"

As the two boys yelled and lunged at each other, Bex walked up to her older brother and leaned against his shoulder, a bored expression on her face. Close up, Sophie noticed Bex's hair wasn't quite the same shade of strawberry blonde as her brothers'. It was definitely pinker, like cotton candy.

"Why does everyone get a talent except for me?" she asked.

"I'm sure you'll manifest soon," said Fitz. "There are kids in my class who didn't manifest an ability until they were fourteen."

"And even if you don't, it's not a big deal." Dex shot a glare at Fitz that clearly said,  _Cut it out!_

Sophie understood both of them. Fitz had come from generations and generations of Telepaths—of course he thought manifesting was a given. But Bex had a fifty-fifty chance of being Talentless. Dex didn't want to get her hopes up.

"Anyway, what are you even talking about?" Dex went on. "The only one of you three with an ability is Lex."

"Nuh-uh." Bex shook her head. "Rex manifested too. I think."

"What?" Dex pushed his sister off of him. "Why didn't he tell Mom and Dad? What talent does he have?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. He can make the ground move. And break things. Watch." She pointed to Rex and Lex wrestling on the Foxfire lawn.

Sophie looked closely. Every time Rex hit the ground, she saw a tiny tremor shake the lawn. He tackled Lex, pushing him backward. Lex's hand shot out to break his fall. When he lifted his hand to hit back, a handprint-shaped patch of ice remained on the grass. Rex stumbled and fell over. The ground rumbled. The ice handprint shattered, the pieces scattering across the grass like a broken splotcher.

Suddenly, Sophie realized what she was seeing.

"That's not a special ability."

"It's not?" Bex said.

"Foster's right," Keefe said, frowning. "Rex is outward channeling. But he's not doing it on purpose."

"Outward channeling?" said Linh. "Isn't that what—"

"What Gethen did in Lumenaria," Sophie finished. She turned to Bex. "It means you're not the last to manifest. Outward channeling is a skill, not a talent."

"I know  _that_ ," she said. "I just thought it was a new talent, that's all. It would be rare, but not impossible. Did you know that on average, 3.72 new talents are discovered every ten years?"

Dex rolled his eyes. "Bex knows everything about abilities. She was really into researching them a few years ago. She gets a new obsession, like, every year."

"I think that's cool," said Sophie.

"I can recite every known talent in reverse alphabetical order," Bex declared. "I've moved on from my talents phase, but all the info's still here." She tapped her head.

"What's your newest phase?" Sophie asked.

"Stars!" Bex laughed and did a little twirl. "My favorite is Rosine because its light is the same color as my hair. My second favorite is Phosphorien. That one's unmapped, but according to  _Legends of the Sky_  it represents fire. My  _third_  favorite is—"

Dex groaned. "Thanks, Sophie. Now she's never going to stop."

"—and I don't have a fourth favorite yet, but I'm starting to memorize all the constellations in order of size. Do you want to hear what I have so far?"

She asked the question directly to Sophie. She may or may not have known what she was doing, but when she looked into the older girl's brown eyes, Sophie saw something she had never encountered before. It was like she had gotten a glimpse into another dimension—a world where a certain smart little kid had been left to her own devices instead of being forced to go to school with students twice her age.

Sophie saw herself—or rather, the person she could have been.

Maybe Bex wasn't as talented or skilled as her brothers. Maybe she would never be. But she had found her own strengths and let them grow, while loving every minute of it.

She got a weird feeling that Fitz was thinking the exact same thing, but she couldn't imagine why.

"So? My constellations list?"

"Not the best t—" Dex started, but Sophie interrupted.

"Go ahead," she said. "I'd love to hear it."


	13. Chapter Nine

“Well. Today’s the day.” Grizel tucked her spear into her belt and planted a swift kiss on Sandor’s gray cheek. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

She slipped out the door without a sound.

“You’d better be,” Sandor called out into the empty air. Then he sat down onto Edaline’s couch with a heavy sigh.

Sophie seized her opportunity. She sat down next to her goblin bodyguard. “Don’t you wish you were out there fighting the Neverseen with Grizel?”

“My only wish is to keep you safe,” Sandor said. His face softened a little. “I _am_ a little worried about her, though. I have a bad feeling about this ambush. But it’s probably nothing.”

“You should go follow her just to make sure, right? At least until you know she’ll be alright?”

Sandor gave a squeaky laugh. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Sophie.”

Now it was her turn to sigh.

“I know you want to be there for your family,” said Edaline. “But like Sandor said, the most important thing right now is keeping you safe. There’s no use putting you in unnecessary danger.”

“Not to mention,” Grady added, “if your human parents see you, it might trigger their memories.”

Sophie’s human parents had spent months as Vespera’s prisoners. She didn’t know what the sinister Empath had done to them, but it had been enough to leave permanent trauma. A Telepath named Damel had had to replace their memories of those months with a false memory of a car crash.

Grady was right. Sophie couldn’t risk her presence bringing back her parents’ painful memories.

But it was still annoying that she was being left out.

And even though Mr. Forkle had said everything would be fine… she was still worried about her human family.

She tried again. “Can’t I at least go to Everglen or someth—”

“No.”

“Fine,” she sulked.

Edaline stood up. “Why don’t we make some custard bursts? I just bought some more chocolate and mint. We can pack up a few and give them to the Vackers as a gift.”

Sophie sighed and nodded. She got up from the sofa and followed her parents into the kitchen. Maybe baking would take her mind off things.

* * *

 

“Now, where is my recipe?” Edaline rummaged through the kitchen drawers, Conjurer-style—which meant dozens of loose-leaf papers flying through the air as Edaline conjured them in and out of existence. Sophie dodged an airborne mallowmelt recipe as she grabbed a baking pan from the cupboard.

“Aha!” Edaline triumphantly held up a folded piece of yellowed paper. She smoothed it out on the counter, using a pair of pink tongs to pin it down. The recipe looked so old, Sophie was worried it would crumble into dust if she touched it.

“This recipe has been passed down from mother to daughter for seventeen generations,” Edaline said, as if she had read Sophie’s mind. “It’s been around for a good few thousand years. Each of my ancestors wrote their names on the back.”

She turned over the page. A long list of names were written on the fragile sheet of paper. The name at the very bottom read “Edaline Dizznee” in her familiar handwriting.

“Dizznee?” Sophie asked aloud.

“Kesler decided to take Juline’s last name when they got married,” Edaline explained. “He wanted to distance himself from his family as much as possible. I don’t blame him.”

Sandor shook his head. “I’ve never understood elvin prejudices.”

“What kind of prejudices?” Sophie blurted out. It wasn’t her place to ask… but she _was_ curious.

“Kesler came from a family of chemists,” said Grady. “They were a bit strange. They believed in… well, human stuff. Molecular bonds. Conservation of mass. Empiricism. They thought alchemy was a perversion of science, that the elves were meddling in things that they shouldn’t be meddling in. So when Kesler announced that he wanted to study alchemy, they disowned him.”

Edaline handed Sophie a baking pan. “Could you grease this up while I prepare the ingredients?”

"Sure." Sophie grabbed a stick of badalisc butter from the bottom shelf. Suddenly, the butter flew from her hand and landed with a splat on the floor. She bent down to pick it up, and it slid away from her hand.

"What the—"

Her sentence was cut short when an invisible hand clapped over her mouth.

"Come to Cliffside," Biana whispered in her ear. "Now."

The hand released.

"I—I have to go," Sophie said. "To the pantry. That was the last stick of butter." She pointed at the slippery mess on the floor.

She ran out of the kitchen before Sandor could follow her.

Sophie didn't stop running until she reached the tall sea cliffs bordering Havenfield. Biana and Shayda were standing, hand in hand, outside Silveny's old pasture. Linh stood apart from them, looking nervous so close to the ocean.

"Good, you made it." Biana grabbed Sophie with her free hand and almost dragged her and Shayda to the edge of Cliffside. "We need you."

"Need me for what?"

"We have a plan," said Shayda. "No matter what Forkle says, this ambush is going to end up wreaking total havoc. We're going to go to that house and protect your family. But we need you to teleport us there."

"Oh." Sophie's voice came out oddly choked.  _I'm not the only one who cares,_  she thought.

"It was all Biana's idea," said Shayda. "She's amazing."

"It wasn't  _all_  me. I mean, you helped. Linh too." Biana looked at the ground, blushing and embarrassed.

"And one other thing," she said. "Can you take off your gloves?"

Sophie peeled off her gloves and held out her hands, wondering what Biana was going to do. Sophie's ability as an Enhancer allowed her to strengthen—and sometimes change—other elves' special abilities.

Shayda put her free hand on Linh's shoulder. Still holding onto Shayda with her right hand, Biana laid her left hand onto Sophie's open palm. Instantly, all four of them vanished.

"Perfect," said Biana's disembodied voice. "Let's go. Lead the way, Sophie."

Carefully—because, after all, Sophie couldn't see her own feet—she climbed over the safety railing at the edge of the cliff. Seeing the railing still filled her with uneasiness. It had been built after the first time she and Dex had been abducted by the Neverseen. Fintan had covered up the kidnapping by making it seem like a tidal wave had washed them away, hence the need for a safety railing.

Her toes curled over the cliff's edge. She took a deep breath.

"Ready?"

"Ready," the other three echoed.

Sophie stepped off the edge of the cliff. An enormous clap of thunder sounded as the portal to the void ripped open. As they fell into the void, she imagined her human family's house. The rip opened again, and the four of them tumbled onto the asphalt. They all coughed as they breathed in the smoggy air.

They were in a Forbidden City. And they were alone.


	14. Perspectives I: The Heir of Fire

Trix slammed the box shut with a bang.

"This," he said softly. "This means nothing."

Ruy's heart tumbled down into his shoes. He hadn't been expecting much. But he had expected…  _something_.

"You have to believe me, Trix."

The Guster folded his arms. Even with his face shrouded under his hood, Ruy could tell he wasn't impressed.

"And why should I believe you?"

"Because this is evidence!" Ruy pointed at the box. "I told you, I found it in Shayda's room at the Swiftsea checkpoint." He opened the box and reached into it. Black dust ran through his fingers as he lifted up his hand. "Look at this!"

"So? She's just using some magsidian for her tech. That stuff is dusty."

"I've gone through her blueprints. She isn't working on  _anything_  that involves magsidian," Ruy insisted. "And the Black Swan carves their fire pendants from magsidian."

He clenched his jaw. He could still taste the smoky tang that had filled the air after the Vacker girl had pulled her trick with his force field and her fire pendant. For the hundredth time, Ruy cursed himself for not having seen it coming. It was exactly the kind of crazy stunt that Shayda was known for doing.

_Like infiltrating the Neverseen…_

"What are you suggesting, Mr. Ignis?"

He flinched. Not because of the cold formality of her tone, but because it always hurt to hear his false name—the one his father had invented for him when he had been shipped off to Exillium, so as not to tarnish the family name.

"I'm saying," he said, "that Shayda is a member of the Black Swan who's been spying on us."

"Ridiculous," said Trix. "She would never get past my security measures. No one ever has, and no one ever will."

_Alright._  Ruy wiped his sweaty palms on his cloak.  _Time to bring out the big guns._

"What about Keefe Sencen?"

This time, Trix flinched. Ruy gave a smirk of satisfaction.

"Well?"

"Fintan was the leader who allowed Keefe Sencen to infiltrate our order. And Fintan is gone.  _I_  am the head of this organization now, and  _I_  have made sure that no one with the slightest connection to the Black Swan can even find our hideouts, let alone spy on us."

"Fintan isn't gone," Ruy snapped. "He's still out there. And he's relying on us to make his vision a reality."

"He's gone!" Trix shouted, finally losing his temper. "You might have worshipped him once, Mr. Ignis, or maybe even have been in love with him, but you have to face the facts! Fintan is as good as dead. He's locked in the most secure prison on earth, and we are never, ever getting him out."

Trix's words chilled Ruy right down to the bone.

The Neverseen had changed. This wasn't the organization he had joined. These weren't his people. Not anymore.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "If you won't rescue Fintan, I will. And when I do, I'll tell him exactly what you told me today. He'll have you tortured and branded as a traitor."

"You go right along and do that," said Trix. "I still won't expel Shayda from the order. You, on the other hand…" He held out his hand. "Your patch, please."

"What? No!" Ruy instinctively grabbed his sleeve, covering up his Neverseen patch. "You can't!"

"I won't ask again."

A cold, bright fury was blooming behind Ruy's eyes. He crumpled the patch in his fingers, ripped it off his sleeve, and threw it to the ground. "Fine. Take it."

"I'll need everything else as well."

Ruy huffed and pulled his pathfinder and Imparter out of his cloak pocket. He tugged hard on his Exillium necklace, snapping the cord. Thousands of tiny beads spilled out onto the floor.

"You asked for everything," he said. "This is all I have."

"You'll have to be washed," said Trix. "Can I trust you to go to Gethen yourself, or will you need to be escorted?"

"I'll go.  _Alone._ "

"Good. Go."

Ruy stomped down the hallway, almost tripping on the beads he had spilled. He would never go to Gethen to have his memory erased. He had plans in his Imparter, plans to take down Shayda once and for all. He had invited her to his fake kidnapping. If she was a Black Swan member, she would try to save the Fosters. Ruy would catch her in the act. Trix would have to take him back.

He was right about Shayda. He  _knew_  he was right.

An old memory surfaced in his mind.

_He was fourteen, sitting in Hall of Tribune before the entire Council. A bell rang, indicating that a sentence had just been passed._ His _sentence. Exillium._

_"No!" he shouted. "This isn't my fault! I'm innocent!"_

_He looked around the room wildly. His eyes landed on his father. "Please."_

_His father turned away and began talking with the Council. In low voices, they discussed the best way to change his youngest son's name._

_Ruy looked up at his brother, one of the Councillors sitting high above him. Their eyes met, for a brief moment. It was enough. Ruy could see the guilt in his face._

_"You know it wasn't me," he accused him. "You know I didn't kill her."_

_His brother whispered in the ear of a security goblin. The goblin rose and advanced toward Ruy. She clamped a pair of glowing handcuffs onto him and pulled him to his feet. He tried to make a force field, but the handcuffs absorbed every energy field he created._

_"I've been framed!" he called out as he was dragged from the room. "It wasn't me! It was—"_

_The door slammed shut with a clang._

_He went limp, all his energy gone. He was right. He_ knew _he was right._

"This isn't my fault," he muttered under his breath. "I'm innocent."

But the memories were already blurring in his mind. Maybe Shayda  _was_  working on some magsidian tech. He had gone through her blueprints so quickly, he might have missed one.

_No._  Trix had been manipulating him, punishing him for supposedly lying when he had been telling the truth. He wouldn't let this happen again. He would go through with the plan.

He had already turned the corner before he realized he had given Trix his Imparter.

Realizing this, he stumbled into the wall. He slid down the wall as his legs gave way underneath him.

"No," he whispered. "No no no no no."

He swore, probably loud enough for the whole building to hear.

Then each of the lights in the hallway flickered out one by one, as if swallowed by a shadowy mouth. It was pitch-black.

It was so quiet, Ruy could hear the panicked beating of his own heart.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed him from behind. Before he had time to react, the figure had put him into a headlock.

_It's Trix. He has the Imparter. He knows what I'm planning. He's going to kill me._

The figure pressed their fingers to his forehead. A million shards of ice pierced his brain, whirling around his mind like a blizzard. Ruy had felt something like this twelve years ago, the day he had sworn fealty to the Neverseen.

This was shadowvapor.

Everything he had learned, the bits and pieces of information he had overheard over the last decade, all rushed back into his head. The purple worms and the shadowvapor that they secreted. How that shadowvapor could turn mirrors into darkness and make someone fall asleep forever. How a powerful enough Shade could, with difficulty, create that kind of shadowvapor.

This wasn't Trix. This was Umber.

He tried to fight her off, but he couldn't move. The shadowvapor was freezing his joints, dulling his mind. He could already feel reality slipping away.

"Sweet dreams," Umber whispered.

That was the last thing Ruy heard. He descended into darkness.


End file.
